If you truly want to interpret a celebrity feud, leave it to the devoted fans of the parties in question.

Calvin Harris lost no time today in defendingTaylor Swift ‘s honor when Zayn Malik decided that an otherwise uneventful Monday was a good time to critique Taylor’s stance on streaming royalties. If that’s what he was indeed doing.

The One Direction heartthrob turned solo heartthrob started the whole thing by retweeting someone else’s comparison between Taylor’s artists-should-be-paid-always position and what can be interpreted as Miley Cyrus‘ more relaxed, free-the-music approach, and after Calvin spoke up in defense of Taylor (without naming names), things quickly escalated.

But while there was plenty of gushing about Calvin going to bat for Taylor, because that’s what good boyfriends do, we’ve re-learned one thing.

You do not get into a Twitter war with either a current or former member of One Direction and expect a win in the court of tweeted opinion.

Sure enough, the Zayniacs were not having it.

Taylor’s got some of the most devoted fans around, and therefore there are plenty of people out there who now think Calvin Harris is the greatest man ever, but taking the high road didn’t help the producer-DJ in this particular case and, despite being kind of a jerk about the whole thing, Zayn totally won the by-proxy Twitter war.

Here’s a sampling of the stones, arrows and mud that was flying in both directions, along with the mild hysteria caused when Zayn’s former group mate Louis Tomlinson started following Pringles chips amid all the hubbub: